Russia

The year 2017 brought wins and failures. The Ukrainian Government was able to approve important reforms, which was still not sufficient to receive scheduled assistance from the IMF and the EU. 2018 will be tough as Ukraine should make large progress in many areas, while the 2019 elections are approaching.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has by decree named a regiment of the Russian air force after the Estonian capital, Tallinn. In the former Soviet republic this has been regarded as a provocation, with good reason.

In 2017, the looming threat of communism has not vanished completely. According to a poll conducted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, 44% of American youth would prefer living under socialism, 7% under communism, and only 42% chose capitalism.

Creating robotic Twitter accounts which generate automatic content on a selected topic became one of the most useful tools in the Kremiln’s disinformation propaganda. Over 80% of Russia-language tweets and almost half the English-language tweets on the NATO presence in Eastern Europe is created by pro-Kremiln robotic accounts.

We may recently often hear that something is a “Putinesque measure”. However, in Hungary, the governing party Fidesz, lead by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is really using Putin’s solutions as its point of reference. Let’s see how similar Orbán’s and Putin’s methods are.

The Liberal movement in Russia is undergoing a serious crisis. There are three reasons for this. First, the Kremlin domestic policies under Putin’s 3rd term in power are designed in such a way that liberals are labelled foreign agents, called enemies of the state, and are being under constant pressure.

Putin’s Russia is the first country that has deliberately made the carnival a cornerstone of its domestic and foreign policies – in fact, of its entire post-Soviet political architecture. The first country to have established, one decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a full-fledged TV-run postmodern dictatorship – a so-called “managed democracy”.

One could rather poetically suggest that it has been all quiet on the cryptoccurency front since the Bitcoin hysteria we experienced 2-3 weeks ago. Its price has been mostly dormant, stagnating around the value of EUR 850. And yet, the crypto-world kept its ball of development rolling.

Year 2016 in Ukraine became a year of starting on the economic recovery path. Real GDP growth in 2016 is estimated at 1.4%. It was supported by higher domestic demand. In particular, real private final consumption increased due to higher disposable income primarily attributed to increase in wage income.

Many people may believe that there is no point in being in a hurry since we cannot predict what President Trump will actually do – maybe after all he is not a madman and his actions so far were just a means of conducting a successful campaign. But what if it wasn’t and what if he actualy does implement everything he promised?